


rich gifts (waxing poor)

by franzferdinand



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, also kind of obsessed with zagreus being affected by the boons he takes, i am thinking directly about the greek gods, man those character tags are ugly, thats all this is, there's kind of background thanzag i may or may not tag it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29489526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franzferdinand/pseuds/franzferdinand
Summary: Zagreus may be a god in his own right, but he's got nothing on his family. When he begins to forge connections with them, their power winds up having a greater influence than he counted on.
Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 128





	1. Goddess of Wisdom and War

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I'm mostly publishing this first chapter to force me to finish the others. I hope you like it, and as always, comments and kudos are love!
> 
> Title is from Hamlet- the full line is something Ophelia says to Hamlet when trying to return his love letters: "Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."

Athena finds him first, with the help of Nyx. He sees her careful eye and accepts, giddy with the anticipation. Her boon is calming, at first, a cool certainty spreading across his shoulders.

Then he moves forward. 

The aspect of Athena is strategy. 

He feels himself learning patterns. He enters a room, sweeps it with efficiency, and picks out his first target. He moves to attack, swift and sure, to catch his opponent off-guard. The barest twitch of a shade’s arm tells him exactly what attack they will use next, and his own arm comes up to deflect before the thought finishes. He is fast, but not rushing. Swift and sure.

It nearly ruins things with Thanatos. He says something, can’t even remember what now, something about the illogic of their partnership or Than’s help or something else. Than vanishes in a rush of wind, and Zagreus abruptly realizes what a fool he was.

So he moves forward, pushing down the sick feeling growing in his stomach. He can concern himself with that later; now he simply needs to focus on what is rational and sensible.

There is something less than charming about his usual banter with Meg, when he has Athena’s power underneath his skin. It is tedious, but useful--he takes in her stance, the arena, where her eyes linger as they watch him. He beats her in record time, but where there might once have been satisfaction is only the cold certainty of an expected outcome.

That is not to say that Athena is emotionless. Far from it. But her emotion is restrained, careful, useful. Thrill at victory. A frustration at loss. A surprising shock of anger when he lays eyes on a door with the telltale helmet of Ares scrawled across it, a piece of disgust-- _Is that your perception of war?_

Everything was education, experience, instruction. He learned, always. 

Some things he did not have to learn.

One day, Zagreus walks into an Elysian chamber and sees a man standing beside Patroclus. His skin is the color of pressed olives, his hair and beard dark and curly. His eyes, as Zagreus approaches, are a storm-tossed blue. 

When those eyes meet his, it is a jolt. All at once he flushes, fills to overflow with affection, with care, with a deep sense of protection. Dogging its heels is anger, regret, a jolt of a loss he knows is not his. 

He sees this man on a blood-soaked battlefield, feet padding silent under the watchful eye of Night and Moon. He sees this man driving nails into a wooden deception. He sees this man thrown about at sea, crusted with salt, starving and thirsty. This man and his countless islands. This man getting by with a silver tongue alone. This man stringing a broad bow. This man staining his hands with the blood of a hundred men in a day. This man and his clever, clever wife. 

"Odysseus," he says, and suddenly he is himself again. “Oh--sir, I’m so sorry, I--” and then Patroclus is standing, walking over to him, grasping his wrists with a surprising gentleness. His hands are not callused or smooth, but rather the strange silken texture that all shades’ bodies are. 

“Relax, stranger,” He murmurs, turning back to Odysseus, whose eyes are trained on the two of them. 

“This is the boy?” Odysseus asks. Patroclus nods, and the recognition calms Zagreus somewhat. 

“Y-yes, I. . . how did you know?” 

Odysseus smiles, and something about it feels like fear and pride all at once. “You have the unmistakable air of my mistress about you.” 

Athena. Of course, Athena. Zagreus closes his eyes and pulls away from Patroclus, trying in vain to ground himself. 

“It is good to meet you, sir,” he says, and his voice is steadier than it should be. He finds himself standing taller, a sudden replacement of his earlier uncertainty. He is unmoored a second longer until he feels an invisible hand at his shoulder. “Your. . . Lady has been of much help.” 

Odysseus’ smile has no humor in it. Zagreus gets one more image: of a city, burning. The fires flicker in the hero’s eyes. Patroclus looks meaningfully at the River Lethe. “Athena has always given her aid to those who deserve it.” 

It sounds like sour ash in his mouth. It sounds like a punishment.

Zagreus does not make it to the surface that time, and as he lays dying, all he can find himself doing is thinking about what he might do better next time.

Athena found him first. This is true and will always be true. As Zagreus goes, he grows to appreciate her and to fear in kind. The places Athena takes him are high and dangerous, and the memories he finds that are not his do nothing but set him on edge. He takes boons from Athena, yes, but he keeps them quiet. Useful. In service to the strength of his relatives, directing that power, knowing how best to use it.

He does not see Odysseus again.


	2. God of Thunder and the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Zeus. That tool.

He expects more from Zeus, honestly. The lightning is impressive, but at first he does not get the same rush as he does from Athena. He notices it slowly, taking shape inside of him, like a roiling sky forming a thunderhead. 

The energy builds, builds, then snaps out of him with a strike of the shield, a through so violent as to look careless. It shakes him, drives him to his knees. He shudders, takes a moment, and looks about him: the room is empty. The shades are gone. There is a Chthonic Key on a small pedestal, glowing softly. 

_Electrifying._

Zagreus climbs to his feet and walks towards it. He finds that his joints ache, his muscles pull uncomfortably. The shield weighs thick and heavy on his arm. He feels like-- no, he _has_ been struck by lightning. He shudders once more and hopes he can take more of those.

It gets easier, as it goes. The lightning feels easy, natural, right in his hands and arcing across the shield. There are sparks in his eyes and at his fingers and he gets a grin so broad it hurts his cheeks. He dashes forward with a crack, slides buzzing between the shades. The edge of the shield slices through them like it is nothing. His teeth crackle in his mouth, shaking so fast it would hurt if he weren’t so hopped up on the tempest.

Meg is a cinch. She’s a good fighter, but Zagreus is a storm incarnate, footsteps booming, static frizzing his hair more than usual. She falls.

As he goes through Asphodel he realizes what it is. He feels proud. Fearless. Like the whole world is his domain, like there is nothing that can stand in his way. It is his. It is all his. Distantly, he thinks maybe he should fear this, this endless confidence, this arrogance, this surety that the world is his to command and his to strike down. 

He does not fear it. He cannot fear it. In his blood is the power of the God of the Underworld, and all around him is the power of the God of the Heavens. He does not know fear. 

It frightens Eurydice. 

She has not met Zeus, likely never will. But a man deaf and blind would know whose boons Zagreus is running on now. His voice is loud when he speaks to her, his laugh too deep. She smiles back, feeds him like always, but he can scent like a hunting hound the fear growing in her. He swallows his next mouthful with force.

He feels like a snake. Like a lion. Like a predator. His mind flashes with images of other times, other women, and as he looks at her he hears names echoing through him. Names ignored, names lied about, names only found out after the fact, names discovered upon hearing of a tragic end, never found or whispered close to a willing ear. 

Io. Europa. Leda. Niobe. Semele. Callisto. Danae. Alcmene. He even sees, in his mind’s eye, a round face staring up at him, confused, frightened, as eagle talons clutch at the boy’s arm, as a rush of power mutes his cries. Ganymede. 

Women scorned. Women humiliated, hunted, murdered. Taken and used. 

He feels his body in a million different forms, disguises, great and large deceptions that have served to further a singular purpose. He knows the rage of Hera, misdirected, always misdirected, because there was never any point in hanging the target on the man who deserved it. What could be done to the Lord of the Skies, the Lord of Lightning, slayer of Titans? 

There was nothing. There had always been nothing. He was a force of nature, an avalanche, a whirlpool. Scylla and Charybdis. The rock and the hard place. 

That force of nature is humming under his skin. Tightening his form. Quickening his strikes. That thing that learned quickly that there is no place on this earth that a mortal may go to be away from the sky.

Zagreus feels sick to his stomach. 

He thanks Eurydice quickly and leaves, rids her of his presence as he knows she must want. Found once, his Lord Uncle finds him again, easily, and though the lightning has begun to numb his extremities he accepts the power, feels himself grow stronger on it. 

The Hydra, the remnants of the Lernian fiend that Hercules himself slew, is easily shaken apart by his thunderous blows. Even the careful shades of Elysium are hard-pressed to avoid being struck from above, from the thunderclouds Zagreus seems to carry with him now that Zeus is with him. Theseus and Asterius are quiet, determined, working in unusual harmony. As he bashes the Minotaur’s face for the final time, he thinks he sees a hint of terror in his shining eyes. He commands himself not to think of it. His commands are always obeyed.

This time he dies in the tunnels of the Temple of the Styx, skewered by a Satyr. He breathes in deeply as he bleeds out, watches the creature snort and snuffle. He is almost grateful when the world finally goes dark: he caught, just barely, a breath of fresh air.


	3. God of Storms and the Sea

Poseidon is a certain kind of restlessness, but a certain kind of stillness too. He moves like the sea, at his own pace and at his own will, bending but not bowing to the movement around him. It puts a rhythm to his body in combat, undulating like waves.

He feels hollow after Zeus. Worried. But Poseidon calms him, somewhat. The ocean is unshakeable, unflappable, always returning to its center. If he goes out of his way, he always comes back. Push and pull. Wave after wave. 

Poseidon, he finds, likes the spear. He wonders that his father and his other Lord Uncle use such a similar weapon, their trident and bident dark reflections, meeting in Varatha, in his hand. He asks Achilles about it, one day, and the man just smiles, bitter. Tells him that it was only after he died that he found out there had been some contention about who might be ruler of the Underworld, that even Poseidon had taken a turn as lord of the dead. Earthshaker, indeed.

But it had not turned out that way. Hades had taken his place, and Poseidon had taken his. The oceans of water and oceans of the dead, meeting only where the water turns to blood and steam and fire as the rivers flow down. Five rivers, five artifacts of his domain.

Zagreus makes note of them as he goes. Fishes in them, crosses them, looks across them. Considers the depths. 

Styx, the closest, the river that lives in his father’s house, is a deep red and iron-rich. This, he knows, is the river the gods swear by, the river that makes their words iron-clad. The river to cross to enter the world of the dead. The point of no return. 

Phlegethon, the second he finds on his journey. The river of fire. Eternally burning, eternally threatening just at the edge of this vision. Burning him should he take more than a brief step onto its surface. There is no wonder that the shades who find themselves in Asphodel (which is, let us be fair, the grand majority) seem to him the most mindless, the most vicious, the most violent for violence’s sake. Their lives were uneventful; their afterlives are ringed in fire and pain.

And Lethe. Fearful Lethe, river of oblivion, of forgetfulness, of losing your pains, yes, but your joys too. Lethe, the river the mortals had to drink from should they ever hope to see the surface again. Their souls, cycling forever, forgetting forever. He does not like to look upon the Lethe long.

And the rivers he sees scarcely, if ever. The Acheron, the river of misery, the river of liminal spaces. Transport. The river Charon uses to move souls about in their endless shifting dance. The River Cocytus, the river of wailing. He had never seen the Cocytus, and for that he was glad. A river for all those lost souls who were never buried properly, a river of the unquiet dead. 

All these rivers live inside him with Poseidon’s power. He is aware of their course and their flow, feels their twists and turns. Fishing is trivial under the Lord of the Waters: he sees them coming, sees them bite on his hook, bait or not. If they seem to be moving away, he nudges them closer. In combat, it pushes his limbs further, faster, smoother. He moves through a room like a waterfall. He is beginning to learn that the commonality between the gods is inevitability. 

After Meg, he finds that he has grown. . . volatile. He is spitting mad walking out of her chamber, her quickly disappearing corpse behind him, but calms at his drink of the fountain. He watches the push and pull at the banks of the Phlegethon, calmed, but the ire rears up the minute he is back at the battle, practically growling as he spears shades. 

He considers, as he watches the waters of the Lethe go by, that perhaps this should not have been unexpected. Poseidon’s anger rises hot and fast, and banks itself down just as quickly. He takes a boon of Athena the first chance he gets, and there is a brief moment of discord within him-- a smell of salt in his nose, the taste of olives in his mouth, and his grip on Varatha makes his knuckles creak. All at once he is taken over, repeating a mantra: _how dare they, how dare they, how dare they? How dare they reject their life, their blood, their very souls--_

And it cuts off. The storm is past. Zagreus shakes as he leaves Charon’s shop, convinces himself that the welling at the back of his throat is just water, a side effect of the power of the sea within him. He had heard the story of the founding of Athens, of course, but he had not realized what vitriol lived beneath the surface.

The ocean becalmed was a beautiful thing. This he knew. What he had not realized was that there were places the ocean became so vast, so endless, that there could not be land in sight for hours. That there were places to be alone, adrift, cut off from everything. 

Zagreus takes another boon. His fingers are wrinkled. He shivers. He is exhausted, but he does not show it beyond the tremors. 

There is so much. Too much. Every glimpse of a river now reminds him of events that he had never seen, reminds him of some slight or another, something to raise waves within. He sees Patroclus and in his mind’s eye again there is Odysseus, more hateful than he had been in Athena’s sight. His right eye spasms like there is a burning rod blinding it, and he nearly collapses in front of Patroclus then and there. 

He does not. The moment passes, as all things do. Once more he is calm, a mirrored surface. There are riptides beneath his skin, leviathans curling themselves into Gordian knots in his stomach. He remembers Nerites, Laocoon, he remembers building the walls of Troy. He remembers Medusa, chilled and soaked to the bone on the floor of Athena’s temple, and remembers feeling nothing but contempt. 

He dies in Elysium. He slips on a pool of water that he himself created, and a chariot drives him smoking, broken, into the waters of the Lethe. As he falls, feels the press of the river around him, he opens his mouth and hopes that he is able to forget.


	4. Goddess of the Wilderness and the Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> love you, Diana <3

At first, Artemis gives him a pounding headache. He does not understand it at first. It comes to him all at once, as he looses a spectral arrow directly into the heart of a shade standing across the dark chamber. His eyesight has improved tenfold.

Artemis is refreshing. She is cool, calm, really calm, not roiling under the surface. Zagreus has never been on a hunt, but he imagines it might feel something like this. 

His breaths are slow and even, carefully considered but not distressed. As he moves through Tartarus, he is surprised: he has never taken so long to be noticed by the shades, never moved so gently and quietly across these stone floors. There are times he can watch the shades move on their own, watch their ethereal forms twist and warp. Though there is nothing of Athena in him, he still finds himself planning, working out future forms, not as though he already knew them, but works them out in real time. He finds that he has endless patience. 

Like the sea, Zagreus has never seen the Moon, though he was raised by the Night herself. When the power of the Hunt is in him, however, he thinks that he feels the moon, gentle about his head. 

That is not to say there is perfect stillness. He finds himself moving in fits and starts, freezing after a doorway to make his plans and moving like a ballista bolt once they are made. Those moments, brief as they are, are an unavoidable urge, a pressure that if he does not _move, now, move_ he is going to miss, lose, waste. 

When the shades are dealt with, he stands panting in the room and rocks on the balls of his feet. It is not just his eyesight: he is now an incredibly sensitive instrument. 

Tartarus passes slowly, but he revels in it. Something in him, a part he knows is both himself and the goddess, recognizes this opportunity for what it is. He uses his swift and silent feet to learn, to watch patterns, to familiarize himself with the forms of the shades. His aim is second nature, now. There is no rush. 

The memories, too, are softer. Less insistent. There is less here to push at him, to reach into him and yank out the ghosts hidden in the power. 

That is not to say that there are none. But they do not live in the confrontations--they live in the quiet moments, in the thoughtful pauses. Just echoes, faded memories.

He sees a door to a boon of Zeus and a smile plays about his lips, as some past life whispers to him: wishes upon a knee, childish hopes maintained to adulthood. Fulfillment, not consummation.

His rests whisper to him long nights under the moon, the company of hounds only or of friends, those with no desire for conversation. The lack of pressure is something he has seldom felt, and it feels like a spring morning. He finds himself missing quiet camaraderie, the feeling of being alone but not lonely. 

Even Meg, who manages to get under his skin despite the residual affection he has for her, finds herself a target for his bow. But there is no malice there, no anger. It is replaced by a kind of admiration, a thing that has been growing since he first found the power of Artemis. The desire to escape this place never leaves him, but he is slowly discovering that perhaps he is capable of some sort of affection for it. This may be his prison, but it is his home too. He may appreciate home terrain, a place where he may meet well anything that comes at him.  
Asphodel is a test. That much is clear from the beginning. The shades in Asphodel are twitchy, observant, more prone to see him the second he steps off his barge. That does not even touch on those shades which burrow through the ground, which feel his footsteps no matter how light. 

He tries. Tries desperately. But what practice he has is not enough. He learns Asphodel, learns the shades, but it is the Bone Hydra he falls to. This is not a hunt; it is a slaughter. What he has learned is no help to him here, where he has no time to waste, no time to wait and watch and learn. 

The Hydra is the thing to bring up the anger. The final moments, vicious moments, are all predator-teeth-bared, righteous fury, a hunt becomes something else, something with none of the elegance or care. It whispers Actaeon in his ears, reminds him of every instance of unasked-for touch, every threat. 

That anger is the thing that does it. The hunt does not lend itself to anger, to rash decisions. He realizes this as he sees himself make every misstep in real time, as he realizes that there is no way out of this where he moves on. He fires an arrow at an ancillary head and feels his shoulder burn with one of their bombs--it was too much, too soon. He should have stepped back, looked around, but he fired. He does it again, again, leaps before he looks, righteous fury burning like a fire alongside the instincts that are screaming at him to do otherwise. 

Eventually, he kills all of the smaller heads and turns back towards the main one, towering over him with bone fangs dripping something that looks like venom, or perhaps Phlegethon’s lava. Zagreus knows, with all the instinct of a hare at the teeth of a hound, that this will not end well for him. He is limping, his right shoulder moving between teeth-grinding pain and utter numbness, too far gone to draw the bow. 

The Hydra hisses, its bones rattling, and he drops Coronacht. The bow barely makes a clatter as it falls to the stones, constructed light as it is. As the Hydra rears back to strike, at once he laments his failure, but still he smiles. There is some satisfaction in a hunt well-enacted, even if he is the one who has been hunted.


	5. Goddess of Love and Beauty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. This is the ramblings of a feral classics major ignoring their coursework.

This god makes him nervous. For all he was grateful for her help, what good could Aphrodite truly be in combat? 

She proves him wrong swiftly.

It is the first time he sees the change as more pronounced in the shades around him. He takes her boon, breathes in her sweetness, and the shades in the next chamber are slow, almost clumsy. He smiles as he strikes out again and again, the weight of Stygius comfortable in his hand, and watches them fall one after the other. It reminds him, briefly, of Zeus, of that feeling of power unmatched. It is _fun_.

Later, Zagreus will wonder if that initial thought had been wrong, or rude, that he should have known better. He will decide, then, that this is half-true. In his defense, meager as it might be, he has never been self-consciously in love, his closest model the odd companionship of Nyx and Hades, which he has never been able to name. The dead mortals, of course, arrive with their mouths and their minds and their souls full to bursting with Aphrodite, cursing her and entreating her in the same breath. He had known she was powerful, but it always seemed to be detached, somewhere else, indirectly pushing things together or pulling them apart.

But really, she was still a goddess. An old goddess, one whom the stories said was able to strike fear into the hearts of each and every Olympian. And he had heard the stories of her anger. 

In a moment of sloth, a shade strikes his shoulder, and he surprises himself with the scream he lets out. He slashes, heedless of the danger, at all the shades around him, unable to cease until they all lie dissipating at his feet. He stands shaking, shivering, the wrath that had risen in a flash falling again almost as quickly. 

As he goes, he wonders that there is so little of Aphrodite that makes him think of love. He thinks of obsession, as he watches the shades sway, their anger tempered. He thinks of misdirection, misguided hope, of underestimation. 

Perhaps this is what love is for the goddess. Perhaps it is meddling, pushing pieces on a chessboard, choosing where love strikes strongest and banking it like a fire. 

He finds that Aphrodite is quick to take offense. Like before, when he had been struck, the anger fires off like an arrow, and will not quiet until the slight is rectified. As he lays about with his sword it is echoed, over and over again, by rages past and present, a million slights, not one of them unpunished.

In Elysium there stands a man. There is a woman at his side, a bent old crone with a hood shading her eyes and tattered robes about her. Zagreus watches, confused, for several moments before he realizes what is different about him. 

This man is alive. He breathes, really breathes, looks about him with a spark in his eyes, tense where he stands. He watches the shades with fear in him, glances at the woman as though for guidance.

To Zagreus’ eyes, though he knows he has never seen this man before, he is familiar. 

His legs itch to run up to him, to scream, to hug him, to kiss his forehead and push all his worries away. This is his son, his baby, the one so pushed about by gods and goddesses alike just as fair Odysseus was, will be tormented for long years before he may finally rest. And now his travels have brought him below, to the Underworld, but clearly not for long. 

Zagreus manages to keep still, just barely. He cannot even imagine what it would be like for the man-- _Aeneas_ , his mind supplies, son of Anchises, a beautiful man--if he ran up, a perfect stranger, claiming undying love. Stronger than his personal hesitance is the feeling, bone-crushing, that this man must pass through unmolested, that he must take his fill of the sights and learn from what shades he will, and go no further. 

He is growing intimately familiar with the stories of the Trojan War, and Aeneas brings all those not-his memories back with a vengeance. They are joined, now, with images of a party--no, a wedding, gods and mortals alike in revelry. He knows without knowing that the couple being joined are Thetis and Peleus, the parents of Achilles, and he smiles despite himself. Their love may be strange and chaotic, but their son will bring devotion unmatched to a plain of death and destruction. 

The image blurs, shifts, as Aeneas turns to the woman beside him more fully. Zagreus can see their mouths moving, Aeneas’ brow lined with concern. He is beginning to understand, but slowly. A few of the shades not clustered around the Lethe are watching him, too. 

The memory snaps back into focus with the sight of Paris. All the words have been spoken, all the offerings made, and all that is left is this moment of waiting. The sister-goddesses are on either side of him, chins high and impetuous. Expectant. 

Aeneas makes his way to a gate of horn, and Paris chooses Aphrodite. Chooses Helen. At that moment, across Greece, thousands of men die, though they do not know it yet. 

The victory buoys Zagreus through the rest of Elysium, brings him grinning through a fight with Theseus and Asterius in which he is begging to push them, to egg them on, force them to bandage each other’s wounds later, speak cold comforts--the knowledge that his actions can do nothing but bind them further brings up a savage joy in him. 

Though the love-goddess is strong, unmatched in influence, Zagreus himself is but fallible. His father skewers him. As he bleeds out, he does not taste iron on his tongue, but sweet honey.


	6. God of Bravery and War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why'd ares' design have to go so hard. he does not at all loom large in the mythology so like. here's some Thots About War and Death.

It is Ares he is the most frightened of. Now that he knows that there are parts of the gods that come to be within him once he takes on their blessings, a great part of him is worried that taking on the aspect of the war god will cause more harm than good, no matter what he uses the power for. 

He is cautious at first, painfully cautious. Tries to act normal, natural, to note every change the power causes in him, that he might never get out of control. It is blindingly difficult, and made even more so by the fact that Ares’ boons are some of the most subtle he has found besides those of Artemis. When he is not blessed with blade rifts or the power to doom his enemies, he is simply stronger, faster, harder to hit and hitting harder. Rather than growing tired he grows eager, excited, a bloodlust without the anger. 

In fact, Ares brings him almost no anger whatsoever. 

Ares does, however, love the Twin Fists. Malphon had served him well under his other relatives, as he mixed and matched their aid, but under War they positively sing. He punches and scrapes and tears, the gloves’ weight no more than an afterthought in him. Though the shades are flimsy once dispatched, surface without flesh, his mind supplies images of wounds, of blood, of men torn asunder in every way the mortals had discovered and many that they have not yet. As he stands panting once the work is done, he will catch sight of himself in a glass or a river and marvel at how clean he is. None of the effluvia of sweat or blood or pus that the mortals inevitably spill in war; perhaps that is why his cousin likes him so much. Under his guidance, he feels more like Death incarnate than Thanatos.

In Tartarus, Ares brings him a claustrophobia completely alien. Zagreus was born and raised in the Underworld, a child who had never seen the sky, only the high and hazy depths. There was no such thing as being afraid of confinement: confinement was all that there was. 

Until Ares. Until walking into one of the smaller pits of Tartarus sets him shaking in his sandals, his hands sweaty where they are hidden in his gloves. There are flashes in his mind of giants, creatures Zagreus knows he has never seen, finding him in a moment of weakness. Being closed in what amounted to a jar, miniscule and dark, never able to move or even breathe without knocking knees or elbows or something, never able to relax. A year of that unquiet darkness, listening to them plot and plan outside, laugh and jeer at their captured god. 

Quieter than that, afterward, a memory of a familiar face: Aphrodite. Not smiling, as Zagreus knows her, with that flicker of cleverness in her eyes, but afraid. Shivering. Glancing about her like a deer who just scented hounds. A net around him, silvery and insubstantial, but unbreakable. Hephaestus’ laugh, out of view. A chorus of others. Eyes on every side.

Once more, Zagreus feels sick. But he presses on, for hesitation is not the way of War, and while he is its (avatar? bearer? devotee?) it is not his way either.

He finds Thanatos in Elysium and is shocked by the swell of affection within him. Not so much because it eclipses all those previously--he had grown used to that, surprising himself with how much he cared for him--but because so much of it was so clearly not his own. 

He hears the toll of a bell, that sickly green pallor overtakes his vision, and there he is, scythe in hand, wry smile upon his lips. Zagreus does not feel his usual sense of fraternal love, so nourished by his youth, or even that sparking new thing he finds growing in his chest, but instead a desire that nearly drives him to his knees. He wants to worship, to sacrifice, to offer tribute. 

“Than,” Is all he says, before the shades appear. 

He fights like the hurricanes he has never felt, the Twin Fists arcing around him in a neverending dance. Warring inside him is the competition, the desire for victory, and the desire that these shades be dispatched in the name of the Lord he is supposed to be fighting with. He wishes, in a strange and delirious moment, that these shades could spill blood, that he might fill a chalice with it and pour it over an altar. 

And then it is finished, so much quicker than all the other times. Zagreus takes a breath and feels the frenzy abate. The dogs are fed for now. 

“Well done,” Thanatos says, and Zagreus glows like the sun. He takes the centaur’s heart gratefully, and watches him leave just as the symbol for Ares appears, circling that mote of power which is so potent inside of him. 

When he speaks with Ares that time, he asks about Thanatos. He feels more than sees the other god’s smile, hears the wistfulness in his tone as he speaks at some length about Death itself, saying much and little at the same time. 

As he drives a fist once more into Theseus’s side, the red mist crowding in the edge of his vision, Zagreus wonders just how many wars it has been. How many mortals have died, so that Ares might give life (ha) to his devotion, might attract the attention of that which he courts ceaselessly, whether or not he knows it. 

Theseus falls with a thud, glaring at Zagreus with those blue, blue eyes, and Zagreus just smiles at him. He knows, as Ares knows, that Thanatos is not lord over those violent deaths. That he never walks a battlefield. Still, he understands. He has written Thanatos love letters in his own deaths, in the second deaths of the shades, and hoped beyond hope that they might someday be read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spare comments?


	7. God of Travelers and Thieves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is on the shorter side but it's what Hermes would've wanted. Let's not waste time.

Zagreus has never seen an insect, let alone felt them crawling under his skin by the thousands, but that is what he imagines the blessing of Hermes feels like. 

It takes him by surprise. It hurts. 

The steps he takes abate it, slightly. He has to run before it goes away, and even then it just turns the hornets to moths, smooth under his skin but still there, still leaving him restless, utterly unable and unwilling to stay still.

The boon he takes makes him faster, as he might have expected from that swiftest of gods. It helps, somewhat, with the infestation. Zagreus finds himself running through the rooms, eyes rolling in his head. He feels on a swivel, always looking, trying in vain to keep up with his limbs. 

It takes some time, but by the time he faces the Bone Hydra he has grown used to the speed. The insects are still there, roiling under the surface, but they feel more like the buzzing of Zeus’ lightning now. Everyone else is moving in slow motion, the Hydra’s heads at a snail’s pace, and Zagreus wants to laugh. He is faster than everything, faster than the wind, already gone by the time a projectile would’ve hit him. Nothing can touch him. 

He strikes the final head from the Hydra before it knows what’s happening. He does laugh then, bright and happy, even as its spine fractures into bone fragments. 

The downside comes in Elysium, as these things so often do. This close to the surface, Hermes is the god that has made his imprisonment utterly intolerable. There is no room to run down here, no place for all his motion to let itself out, to fly, to cross the world in a step. 

He leaps over the Lethe, bisects shades, keeps himself away from every single butterfly. He feels like a bead in a jar, rattling, banging against the sides with every movement. He wants to break this glass. 

It is better in the Temple of Styx. The Satyrs don’t know what hit them, and for the first time, he goes down every single tunnel. He’s got time to spare. 

It’s the best on the surface. The fresh air in his lungs is like an electric shock, brings the hive back up to a whirring buzz. He could take a step and be on the other side of the world. 

Zagreus laughs as he fights his father. He is freer than he’s ever been, running circles around this old and unwieldy god, and it feels wonderful. Within him are all the pranks Hermes has ever pulled, all the groans and shaking fists he has brought from his high-brow kin. Hermes knows full well that they are pathetic, they are laughable, they are so self-important because they do not have what he has, cannot see what he sees. His is messenger-god, traveller-god, thief-god, everywhere and nowhere. They are so _slow_. 

It doesn’t work. His father is slow, yes, but he knows how to fill the field with hazards, and even Zagreus’ quick and careful eyes cannot see everything. He is speared, but he does not regret it. Hermes has always been a psychopomp. Zagreus will just be the next soul he bears underground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha messenger god go brrrr


End file.
